by Robert Irwin
‘Sally, I have something to say.’
‘Oh yes?’ She did not look at me. How could she have known what was coming next? She did.
‘I am moving out of Melchett’s place. Obviously I have no choice about that … Well the Lodge is taking me in, for a while at least.’
‘So that’s it? Well, OK – if that is what you want.’ She looked sulky, which did not suit her. ‘Personally I wouldn’t spend a night there. The place gives me the creeps.’
She shrugged. I pressed on.
‘And it is not going to be so easy for me to see you in the future. The Lodge has strict rules and I shall have duties.’
She shrugged again. The cow was determined not to make it easy for me.
‘Well, whenever,’ she said. ‘I am always around for you. When shall we go out again? Not a film next time. Let’s go back to Middle Earth.’
‘Maybe. That would be really nice, but first I have to sort my life out. You know how … .’
At last, this was too much for her. She crumpled and started crying.
‘You are evil!’ she cried out through her tears.
‘What is evil? I can’t get my head round this “evil” you are talking about.’
‘Oh Peter, you really do know what I mean. People used to talk about evil and I thought that it was something abstract – and therefore, in a way non-existent. I was so very wrong … ’
Her voice tailed off in a whisper. I sounded indignant,
‘If you think that I am evil, you can’t possibly have loved me then.’
She was crying buckets and everyone in the pub was looking at us, though some were pretending not to.
‘I feel so sorry for you, Peter. So sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too.’
And I hurried out of the pub.
I wish that, at some time before we finally split up I could have got her to release me from my oath to screw her when she is dead, but obviously it would have been inappropriate to raise the matter this evening.
Thursday, June 1st
A great day! Having woken early, I reached the HMV shop in Oxford Street soon after opening time and, after queuing for about twenty minutes, I secured my own copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The sleeve gave me a start, for there, standing towards the left in the Beatles’ fantasy entourage, was a scowling Aleister Crowley. Maybe Cosmic is right about the Beatles after all. Anyway there seems something fated about this record. In some way, I do not yet know in what way, this record is part of my destiny.
Back at my pad, I played the record again and again. This is a need with me. I have to hear music again and again in order to internalise it. ‘Sgt. Pepper’ is this summer’s record, yet by autumn I know that all its tunes will be dead and lifeless in my ears. Only perhaps in returning to the record years later will I be able to capture some of that initial summery enthusiasm. For now, on a June morning, the record is amazing – that wall of sound, the tracks sliding one into another, and the kaleidoscopic tumble of lyrical images and sound effects. The music is as brassy and percussive as the sleeve is gaudy. At first, as I listen, I am fiercely elated, but slowly it comes to me that the themes are really rather sad – about getting old, dying in car accidents and things like that. This is the music of the summer of 67 and by putting it on the turntable I shall always be able to return to that momentous summer. But then who will I be when I play this record in twenty years time?
In the course of packing to leave, I found a tiny stash of opium which I had totally forgotten about. I hesitated a bit, because the thing is that opium gives me the most frightful constipation. On the other hand, it is a subtle drug and I can still operate effectively under its influence. So I rolled the stuff into a joint for a farewell blast. It went great with the ‘Mr Kite’ track. Straights just cannot hear our music, since it is written to be heard on drugs. The tamburas and sitars give an eerie trippiness to some of ‘Sgt Pepper’s’ tracks – like my life, the music is out of control. I play it as loud as the speaker will allow, as part of my farewell to Melchett. Besides, music is no good unless it is played really loud. I think that I had listened to ‘Sgt. Pepper’ seven and a bit times by the time Phil arrived with his van. Phil has a military haircut and a trim little moustache. He apparently does odd jobs for Granville, shifting antiques around the country, and he vaguely knows Cosmic, since they are in the same line of business. Phil helped me get my stuff into the van. There was not all that much to shift, but the records were heavy. As we drive out of Notting Hill, I notice that ‘She’s Leaving Home’ is silently playing in my head.
Strictly Black Book Lodge is the name of our esoteric Brotherhood and not the name of the house which is the headquarters of the Brotherhood. My new address is actually Horapollo House, Urqhart Street, Swiss Cottage. As we drive off, the plangent strains of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ are still running in my head and I find myself thinking of Sally. Was it indeed love? Or was it just sex? After my encounter with the death-maiden Tbubi, I am not sure that I would ever dare to go to bed with a woman ever again. I know I am not a brave person. The illusions of Dr Felton make me afraid. And because I am afraid, I am about to place myself completely in his power. I am not a logical person either …
Although Phil has done bits and pieces of work for Granville, he is not an Adept or anything and he is immensely curious about the place and what goes on there. I was surreptitiously looking in his wing-mirror to see if my pupils were dilated when he began to engage me in unwelcome conversation. Fortunately I was not hallucinating – merely thinking strange thoughts.
‘Horapollo House, that’s some kind of educational institute, isn’t it?’
I nodded and then, seeing that he is expecting more, I add,
‘They have lectures and seminars on philosophy.’
‘A philosophical education is a fine thing. Everybody connected with the House seems to be rich.’
‘I’m not rich.’
‘I know you’re not. Don’t worry. Your removal bill is being paid at the other end. No, but – don’t get me wrong – they’re a funny lot up there, aren’t they?’
I shrug non-committally.
‘No, but you know what I mean. They are all very polite and cultured and everything, but there is an atmosphere. They are not like ordinary philosophers, are they?’
All drugs have their inbuilt paranoia and I was getting more and more paranoid that, if we kept on talking, he would rumble that I was not quite on the same planet as him. I allowed some irritation to sound in my voice.
‘I don’t really know what an ordinary philosopher is like. But they are fine. They are just ordinary people.’
The subject is dropped and I look out of the window at the girls in their summer dresses, until Horapollo House looms up ahead of us. Then I am inside Horapollo House and inside me are the opium and ghosts of chords played upon the sitar. The effect is pretty potent. Fortunately Phil and Mr Grieves are there to help to get my stuff up to the room on the second floor. Taking drugs is like going shopping for a different brain. The brain I had picked up this morning is overwhelmed by the hallway and the staircase of Horapollo House. The place is like a cathedral sculpted out of darkness and at the heart of the darkness is this tumble of staircases, balustrades and corridors going all over the place. The eye is led onwards by the dull gleam of brass and crimson woodwork until it is lost in the upper gloom. The carpets I tread upon are very soft and decorated with small, bright, ornamental designs, so that it seems to me that I walk upon human eyes. Then I am amazed by a moth fluttering in the stairwell. It was … amazing. It was a blazon in the heraldry of drugs. A hieroglyph maybe. Really quite amazing, but one has to accept that there are no words for this kind of thing.
Phil makes the most of his brief entrée. He has picked up a fair knowledge of antiques and his eyes dart about the place.
‘That’s a medallion Ushak,’ pointing to the carpet on the hall floor. ‘They’ve got some nice stuff here.’
He rubs h
is fingers along the intertwining gold and vermilion serpents which form the banister of the central staircase. On the first floor, he pauses in his lifting to take in the frescoes and, having done so, he recoils a bit. The frescoes are faithful copies of those painted by Crowley for his Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu: a naked man sodomised by a goat god, and his spunk spraying over the Whore of the Stars, and a Kundalini serpent preparing to devour headless dancers. Phil was so distracted at the sight of these images that he almost fell over the stuffed tiger on the next landing. By the time he had carried up his third load, he was eager to leave. And I was desperate for him to leave as every noise he made grated most horribly on my heightened sensibility.
‘Good luck,’ he said as he shook my hand. I almost fainted at the pressure of his grip.
So now I am alone in my new room. I wonder who had it before me? It is austerely furnished and decorated. There are two beds and a wardrobe and a high-backed chair, but no table. So I am using the second bed as a desk. A copy of Aleister Crowley’s second novel, Moonchild, has been left on the chair between the two beds. Above me there are only the attics. The ceiling creaks from time to time, as does the whole house, which is like a sailing ship in a heavy swell. Now I wish that Sally had been able to stick with the Lodge’s lecture programme and that she too had kissed the Master’s hand. I wish that the bed I am writing this on was going to be occupied by her. I tried to doze for a bit, but first I find that faces, hundreds of faces, thousands of faces of men and women I have never seen before come crowding in on my inner eye. The faces are angry, plaintive, amused, hungry, supercilious, half-asleep, terrified, pompous, joyous, inscrutable. They rush on by, totally without purpose. Then, as I watch this stuff and wait and hope for the river of faces to dwindle and vanish, I become aware that there is a terrible itching in one of my ears. I poke at it as best I can, but I have caught nothing with my fingernail. The conviction comes upon me that an insect has got into the inner chamber of my ear and from there it is going to eat its way through my brain. Finally I do doze off a bit and find myself the victim of geometric dreams, full of abstract promises and menaces. If the reverse of A is A to the power of ten, is the contrary true? And, if I am A to the power of ten, is the same true of my bride-to-be? And, if I and my bride join forces, is this an additive increase or is our power multiplied? Asleep, I am helpless to fend of these problems, but, when I awake, I have my old brain back.
Just before six I went down to Felton’s room, taking my diary with me. I knocked and walked in and was greeted with a ragged chorus:
‘Love is the Law, Love under the Will!’
‘Welcome, Peter!’
‘Welcome, Non Omnis Moriar!’
Most of the senior members that one sees around the Lodge – Granville, Laura, Agatha, Marcus, Rio, Maxine and tonight’s speaker, Colonel Chalmers – had assembled in Felton’s study and, crowded behind his desk, they raised glasses of sherry in my direction.
‘There will be no inspection of your diary tonight,’ said Felton. ‘That can wait until next week, for tonight we thought that we would make you welcome to Horapollo House.’
Maxine wanted to inspect my diary-writing hand and this led on to talk of diary-keeping. Laura claimed that keeping a diary forced her to do interesting things, because otherwise it was too boring reading what she had done later. Granville quoted The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.’ There was talk also of Colonel Chalmers’s recent holiday. He had gone back to India to revisit old postings. He was gratified to find that, everywhere he went, there were Indians eager to tell him how much the British were missed.
‘Things have gone downhill so badly that they want us back. We will have to return in order to save the Indian subcontinent from heathen darkness … ’
I was listening and not listening to Chalmers. I was thinking about how sad it was that it had come to this – a group of mostly elderly men and women sipping sherry and talking about diary-keeping. I suppose that I am now living in a kind of commune. This ought to be exciting, but the trouble is that everything exciting – Horapollo House’s ‘OH-WOW-MAN!’ period – happened twenty or more years ago, when Aleister Crowley was alive or only just dead. From the photographs, Felton was then still slim. Laura as a chick must have been quite something. Chalmers, who these days is barely functional as a human being, may still have been sane then. The Master was promising his followers great things. (We hardly see him now.) Whatever it was that went wrong for all of them was connected with the Cairo Working. That was where they blew it. And now here they all are poring over each other’s diaries.
Towards the end of our Satanist’s sherry party, Felton suddenly became brisk,
‘Just a few house rules, Non Omnis Moriar. Nothing that you will find excessive, I hope. First no overnight guests without our knowledge. If you are going to miss dinner, you must tell Grieves or leave a note in the kitchen. You must, of course, observe the Lodge’s fast days. You may play your record-player in your room, but only at civilised hours and at a sensible volume. If you take drugs, the results must be entered into your diary. No sleeping in the daytime in Horapollo House or in its garden. Be careful about that.’
‘No masturbation,’ Granville added. ‘Masturbation feeds the Qlippoth.’
Laura and Rio laughed, but Felton did not smile. (MEMO investigate the Qlippoth.)
‘You will be expected from time to time to help Grieves and his wife in the kitchen, but first I thought that we should put you to work cataloguing and dusting the Lodge’s library. Just an hour or two each day when possible. Think of us as your new family and, once again, welcome, Non Omnis Moriar.’
With that we dispersed. Only Granville came along with me to Chalmers’s lecture. Granville sits at the back and I think that his function is to observe and report on the rest of the audience. Tonight’s audience was alternately restive and dozy. I noticed that Ron is indeed no longer with us. Chalmers is not a good lecturer. He was supposed to be talking about the first principles of Kabalism and the hierarchies of the Tree of Sephiroth. However, once Chalmers had pointed out that a tree was something to be climbed and that an Adept on the Kabalistic path was like a mountaineer inching his way up to a peak that was hidden in the clouds, his eyes began to mist over. He was back in his beloved Himalayas and we, his audience, were left behind scrabbling about on the lower slopes. The lecture concluded, the colonel rushed out to catch his train to Reading.
While we were standing about after the lecture, I had an odd conversation with Cosmic.
‘What do you think of me, Peter?’
I was nonplussed. I could not think of anything to say.
‘Do you take me seriously?’ Cosmic persisted.
‘Of course I do.’
‘Do they take me seriously?’
He meant the senior members of the Lodge. I shrugged. Cosmic took my shrug as meaning something.
‘Yeah, it’s kind of heavy. I’m not sure that they do trust me. I think they suspect that I’m some kind of infiltrator. That’s why you’re on the inside now and I’m not. Put in a word for me will you?’
‘That’s not necessary, Cosmic. You’re just being paranoid.’
And indeed he did look and sound paranoid, whispering like that to me in the hall. Cosmic is a man who always sees his life as directed by conspiracies. All druggies are prone to paranoia. It comes with the substances. Even so, Cosmic was unusually twitchy tonight and I wanted to get away from him as fast as possible, for who knows? Perhaps paranoia is contagious. I was just about to walk away from him, when he grabbed my sleeve and said,
‘The word is that you’ve split up with your chick.’
I just nodded.
‘That’s a bad trip … really heavy. But so you won’t get hung up, if I give her a buzz and maybe go over and rap with her and give her some comfort. I mean, I really like Sally, but if it hangs you up, me seeing her, then just say the word and
I’ll keep my distance.’
I find that I still cannot speak, but I make a thumbs-up sign and break away from him.
‘Stay cool!’ he calls out, as I head towards the dining room. Surely he will not be allowed to hang out with Sally if I am forbidden to do so?
At dinner that night, I helped Grieves put out the dishes. All the permanent residents, except for the Master, were at the table – Felton, Laura, Agatha and Marcus. After the ritual blessing of the meal and the silent meditation on the first mouthful, conversation at table was subdued and I was not really listening. I was thinking about Sally and her questions. Robert Drapers told her that the worst thing he could imagine was having a cat hanging on to his face with its claws.
Friday, June 2nd
The rustles and creaks of an old house take some getting used to and I drifted in and out of sleep. I am afraid – not of the house, but of what I am, or what I am becoming.
One thing you can say about Satanists, they are great readers. There are thousands of books here. God knows how many, ten or fifteen thousand. I sit writing this in the library. I have spent almost all day here, examining the books, scribbling on cards and watching the shadows creep across the floor and enter my mind. I had been planning on another session at the playground today, but since I awoke to steady drenching rain, I decided that today would be a good time to go about starting to earn my keep here.
The standard texts are all on the shelves: Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Denudata, The Book of the Ibbar, Glanville’s Saducismus Triumphatus, Court de Gebelin, the Voynich Facsimile, 777, De Praestigis Demonorum, Barret’s The Magus, Papus, Sinistatrari and so on. Then there is a lot of serious Egyptological stuff by Maspero and Wallis Budge and what may be a complete run of the Bulletin de l’Institut Archéologique en Egypte. And some badly out-of-date reference works, including the Almanach de Gotha, and Crockford’s Clerical Directory. I have created a special section for novels. They are all pretty dated, romances by Bulwer Lytton, Marie Corelli, Dornford Yates and Dennis Wheatley; also Dekobra’s Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, Meyrink’s The Golem, Cazotte’s The Devil in Love, Arlen’s The Green Hat, Huysmans’s Là-Bas, Charles Williams’s War in Heaven.
